One Good Man. Charlotte Douglas
“Cool,” Brittany said. “Can I meet him?”
“Not now. I need your help.” Jodie winced at the edge to her voice.
She definitely had her work cut out for her. Between feeding ravenous Marines and keeping her daughter away from Jeff’s first resident delinquent, it was going to be a long day.
* * *
FIVE HOURS LATER Jeff sat beneath a sugar maple and devoured a bowl of chili and an Italian sub. The morning had gone well. The timber framing crew from Asheville had arrived immediately after Jodie. Grant and Merrilee had made a brief appearance but had to leave when the vet received an emergency call.
With Jeff and his buddies, assisted by Brynn and Daniel providing additional grunt work, the massive dormitory with kitchen/dining/living room was taking shape. By dark, the framing would be complete, and Jeff and his Marines could add the roof, walls and finishing work over the next few weeks.
An unaccustomed lump blocked his throat. He’d never had friends while growing up in Pleasant Valley, mostly due to his father’s infamous reputation. Jeff hadn’t been like the other kids with their extended families, tidy homes with white picket fences and fathers who didn’t stay raging drunk and beat the crap out of them. And no one had understood better than Jeff that he didn’t belong. He’d built a wall around himself merely to survive.
But the corps had been different. Backgrounds and social status were irrelevant. All that mattered was that a man carried his load, became part of the team and watched his buddies’ backs. Determined to make the grade, Jeff had thrown himself first into training and later into missions with every fiber of his being. As gung-ho, kick-ass, hang-tough as the best of them, he’d not only developed self-esteem, he’d won the unqualified respect and undying loyalty of his men. And he loved them more than he’d loved his own blood kin.
“Dessert?” A soft, musical voice interrupted his thoughts.
Jeff glanced up at Jodie, standing in front of him with a plate of chocolate cake in each hand. He set aside his empty chili bowl and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “If you’ll join me.”
Her creamy complexion blushed like a Georgia peach. “I have to—”
“You’ve served everyone else. They’re fine.”
Jodie glanced across the clearing as if hoping to prove him wrong, but the framing crew, gathered at the back of their pickups, held full plates. Brynn, flanked by Brittany and Daniel, sat under the canopy at a makeshift table of planks and sawhorses. Gofer and Kermit had set up a chessboard on a nearby stump and were engrossed in a game. Picking up trash and stray tools and, as usual, unable to stay in one place, Ricochet wandered the work site. Trace reclined on the porch steps with his nose in a novel, Cold Mountain, whose namesake stood just over the North Carolina line near the Blue Ridge Parkway, fifty miles north.
Jeff patted the ground beside him. “Sit with me.”
With the tension of a wild animal trapped with no place to run, Jodie handed him a plate and sank beside him.
“I won’t bite,” he said.
“Hmmmph.” She avoided his eyes. “Thought you Marines ate civilians for lunch.”
He lifted the plate with its thick wedge of cake. “Only when there aren’t such delicious alternatives.”
Not that Jodie wasn’t delicious in her own way. The delicate fragrance of her magnolia-scented shampoo teased his nostrils and fanned a hunger unrelated to food. He stowed his desire and put a lock on it. He had promises to keep, and no woman, not even one as pretty as Jodie, could distract him.
“You have a name for this place?” she asked.
Jeff shrugged. “I’ve always called it home, such as it is.”
“I mean your project, your camp. It has to have a name.”
He’d named it, all right. Maybe if Jodie knew the story behind that name, she’d be more amenable to helping later. “I’m calling it Archer Farm.”
“Archer? As in bows and arrows?” She seemed confused.
“Archer, as in Captain Colin Archer,” Jeff said quietly, steeled against the pain the name evoked.
“One of your team?” She indicated the Marines scattered across the building site.
“The best of our team, but he’s not here today. Except in spirit.”
Jodie took a bite of chocolate cake and waited for him to continue.
“Arch saved my life in Afghanistan.”
Remembering, Jeff could almost feel the biting cold of that winter night, see the star-strewn heavens above the dark mountain peaks, taste the grit of the desert and hear the keening wind.
“We were on a re-con mission to identify the exact location of a terrorist group hiding in a complex of connected caves. Our job was to secure coordinates, convey them to headquarters and get out. Smart bombs would do the rest.
“Harris and I took point, and, in spite of all precautions, Harris somehow tripped a land mine.”
Jodie set her cake aside, as if her appetite had fled.
“Harris died instantly,” Jeff said, “and I was injured. Couldn’t move. Men with guns poured out of those caves like a scene from a Schwarzenegger movie. Only all too real.”
Jodie shuddered, drew her knees to her chest and hugged them.
“The team tossed smoke grenades and laid down covering fire. Arch fought his way through and carried me out.”
“Must have been scary,” Jodie said.
“Scary is too mild a term. I was terrified out of my mind.”
“Captain Archer must have been, too.”
Jeff nodded. “People have the wrong idea about courage. Bravery doesn’t mean you’re not afraid. It means doing what you have to, in spite of your fears.”
“So you’re naming your project after the man who saved your life?”
“He did more than that. Arch went back after Harris.”
“But Harris was dead.”
“Marines don’t leave their men behind. Ever.”
“So Archer was a hero twice over that night.”
“He was more than a hero. He was my best friend, the closest thing to a brother I ever had.” Jeff took a bite of cake and forced himself to swallow past the tightness in his throat. The creamy chocolate tasted like dust and ashes.
“Was?”
“He was killed a year later by a suicide bomber in Baghdad. I’d have been with him if I hadn’t been in sick bay with food poisoning.”
“I’m sorry about your friend.”
Bitterness consumed him. “Hell of a way for Arch to die. The bravest man I know killed by a fanatical coward.” Jeff shook his head in disgust, using anger to hold back tears. “He should be here today. This project was our dream.”
“You’ve been planning this a long time?”
“Ever since Arch and I met in boot camp. He came from a tough Chicago neighborhood, an orphan raised by his elderly grandmother. The Marine Corps was his ticket out, same as mine.”
“But you came back here.”
Jeff nodded. “Arch and I agreed that once we left the service, we’d build this place together. We wanted to help other troubled kids before they were swallowed up by the legal system and sent to prison.”
“Kids like Daniel?” Jodie’s voice sounded strange, as if under tight control.
Jeff